(It's really not about the cup.)

Driving

Things have been insanely busy around the Pink Cup House, but I wanted to catch you up.

Frances, at nearly 11.5 years, is changing.

For one thing, she has become very tall and lanky, and she’s starting to appear more teenager-ish.

For another thing, she is now likely to share facts with people as a way to connect, and she takes advice about how to interact. The risks she takes often pay off. Recently, I overheard her approach a group of adults and say, “Hi. My name is Frances.” People spoke positively about her to me frequently throughout the evening.

Moreover, she now combines honesty and humour to affect someone. For example, with all four of us in the car one recent evening, we had the following conversation:

Me: One day, girls, we’ll get a new car.

Frances: When Daddy finally agrees to spend some money…

We all laughed out loud.

As I mentioned before, her teacher has described her as “delightfully sassy.” The other day, I asked Pink Cup Sister to go to the basement for a step stool. She came back empty handed because all she could see was something that looked like a bench. Pink Cup Daddy went down to the basement and grabbed the stool. At this point, Frances said, “Don’t worry, Mummy. You won’t have to be disappointed in me: I know what a step stool is.” 🤭

So, “ribbing” her sister, her father, and, sometimes, me has become second nature to her.

She still plays with horse dolls, skips from place to place, but she is growing up.

I know that it’s my job to make sure that Frances knows social rules and to help her make sense of them, but sometimes it is very endearing when she doesn’t remember.

For example, in the car recently, Frances handed her sister some food that she intended to share and then said, “You’re welcome.”

“You have to wait until the person says, ‘Thank you,'” I reminded her.

“Oops. I sometimes get the words confused,” she replied.

She hadn’t said “you’re welcome” sarcastically; the words that she needs in social situations just aren’t always available to her or she confuses words because following the rule hasn’t yet become automatic to her.

At those moments, even though I step in to help, I’m really aware of just how much I appreciate who she is.

I’m not the only one in the family of whom Frances asks wonderful, out-of-the-blue questions. Occasionally, I get to overhear conversations such as the following (in the car, when she was seven years old):

Frances: You can’t touch feelings. You can’t see feelings. So, why do you believe in them?

Frances has always struggled with pragmatic language (social language and skills in everyday interactions with others).

Partings for Frances have always been difficult in the sense that, at first, she didn’t know that speaking is necessary when people temporarily part ways.

Then, after some time, she realized that something needs to be said, but didn’t know what to say.

For us, for a while, it was good enough that she sensed a need to say something at all because we could slowly introduce her to some parting words. (We didn’t want to constantly correct her and risk damaging her self-confidence.)

But even when she was learning parting words, she still managed to surprise us with her responses.

In the above panel, I wanted to show that, as an ASD parent, there are times when we’ve temporarily accepted as “normal” something that would probably strike others as funny.

As an update: in the three years since the date of the panel when she was six years old, Frances went through a phase of using almost appropriate language. For example, when leaving for school, she would often say to me, “See you tomorrow”. Now, she will often say “goodbye” or “see you later”, if she acknowledges that I’ve said goodbye to her.